Surprising facts about human emotions

Understanding human emotions and especially our own emotions might give us a greater control over our behavior and particularly over our economic decisions. Many truths that scientists discovered show surprising facts of our emotional side.

Emotions are generally associated with stimuli that trigger physiological responses: increases in the pulse rate, body temperature, skin conductivity level or a change in respiration rate.

In Greek mythology, emotions such as rage, envy, revenge or jealousy were believed to cause the diseases that Goddess Pandora released to punish mankind.

Antique healers believed that every main body organ controls specific emotions. Happiness was thus a product of the heart, rage – of the liver and fear came out of the kidney.

A study published recently in The Journal of Consumer Research proved that, compared to pragmatic individuals, people who think in abstract terms experience a more intense reaction to commercials that use different emotions.

Studies showed that one of the most efficient marketing techniques is the creation of a strong link between brand image and a certain emotion, such as happiness, wealth, solidarity, intimacy etc..

Our society promotes exclusively positive emotions, developing techniques to annihilate negative ones. However, studies show it is important to be able to process negative emotions and thoughts in order to ensure individual psychological and mental health. Denying or discharging negative emotions on the other side has long-term pathological effects. Moreover, processing negative emotions is important for the realistic evaluation of our own experiences.

According to a study cited by Popsci.com, sadness and rage are among the hardest to control emotions. Unlike the classical social smile that most of us are able to display at any time, negative emotions are hard to fake. In order to groundlessly express fear, sadness, rage or surprise, we need a real acting talent, as they do not come out naturally.

Although for a long time anthropologists believed that morality and its systems influenced the emotional flow, recent studies prove that, in reality, our emotional responses have led to the creation of a moral sense. We do not experience negative feelings when we witness an abuse because we know it is wrong. It is the other way round. We regard the abuse as being wrong because it triggers a negative response.

Any emotion has three components: 1) physiological changes (changes in the heart rate); 2) behavioral response – the tendency of avoiding the situation or of reacting to it; 3) a subjective experience, such as anger, happiness or sadness.

Most scientists believe that basic emotions are innate and not culturally learned.

Emotions generate a certain expression pattern on facial muscles. What is interesting is that the process works the other way round, too. People who mime certain emotions might end up feeling them.

fMRI studies proved that negative expressions and the experience of negative emotions (rage, anxiety etc.) trigger a more intense brain activity in the right frontal cortex and within deeper brain structures (such as the amygdala). Meanwhile, positive emotions trigger a more intense activity in the left frontal cortex, as Paul Ekman explained in Emotions Revealed.

The emotion associated to a certain event can last longer than the mental recall of that experience. According to a recent study, those suffering from Alzheimer can remember the emotions connected to certain events but fail to recall the event itself.

Although facial expressivity is the same throughout most of the existing cultures, there are particularities. For example, Japanese have a difficulty in recognizing facial expressions that communicate rage and tend to better hide negative emotions than Westerners.

The smile is the expression covering the largest range of emotions, and also the trickiest one. 18 types of different smiles have been identified: from the candid or ironic smile to the polite or the self-sufficient one. The one expressing real happiness has been named the Duchenne smile, in honor of the French neurologist who wrote the theory, Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne.

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